Neighborhood Fights Back Against `Artists`

The workers who for six weeks have been tuckpointing and sandblasting the building in which Ralla Klepak`s West Andersonville neighborhood law office is located returned for some touch-ups Tuesday.

They discovered that someone had been there before them. One corner of the building was covered with crude gang symbols rendered in white paint, some 10-feet tall.

``The workmen had done such a beautiful job, they were like artists in their pride. But it must have been like leaving a clean canvas,`` Klepak said.

The graffiti spilled over to the neighboring apartment building at 1607 W. Foster Ave. Another building on the block, at 5134 N. Ashland Ave., also was hit.

But the young graffiti painters who spoiled $7,000 of cleaning efforts on Klepak`s building did not get away clean. Police said they caught two of the three teenagers responsible after neighbors alerted officers to the vandalism at about 3 a.m. Tuesday.

Two patrol officers cornered a pair of 17-year-olds in the alley behind Klepak`s office at 5158 N. Ashland Ave. Michael Gonzales, 1945 W. Foster Ave., and Olivio Gonzales, 4847 N. Wolcott Ave., were charged with criminal damage to property. Olivio Gonzales was released late Tuesday on a $1,000 bond, while Michael Gonzales remained in the Foster Avenue District lock-up, awaiting an appearance Sept. 25 in Cook County Misdemeanor Court.

``The police said the neighbors came out on their back porches and saw them and called the police. That is music to my ears,`` said Klepak, who moved her office from the Loop 11 years ago.

But alert and helpful neighbors won`t save her law practice if gangs continue to smear their primitive signs on a building she has tried to beautify, she said.

``If this is literally handwriting on the wall--my wall--that the gangs are moving in, I won`t tolerate it,`` she said. ``Many of my clients are from northern suburbs, and they won`t come to a graffiti-covered office. If it keeps up, I will sell the building. And if I go, the neighborhood will have lost a concerned landlord.``

Klepak`s concern apparently was shared by others in the West Andersonville neighborhood, which has undergone a transformation in recent years from what was almost exclusively a Scandinavian and German enclave to one with a significant Hispanic population.

Flyers were being distributed in the area Tuesday afternoon, calling for the formation of a neighborhood watch group, according to Joe Riffert, who owns the building at 5134 N. Ashland Ave.

The graffiti painted on two corners of Riffert`s apartment building apparently were intended to cover black-paint graffiti of a rival gang, he said. He had tried without success to remove the first group of symbols.

``It drives everyone crazy,`` Riffert said. ``It`s just a big mess. You try to keep up your apartment building and someone rips it all down for you.`` John Pickens, who owns the building at 1607 W. Foster Ave., said he only recently won a war with gang members who kept breaking down a front door and painting in the hallways.

``Now they have started on the outside,`` he lamented.

Pickens, who paid $2,000 to have the building tuckpointed last year, was a double victim of gang graffiti Tuesday. An apartment building he owns in Humboldt Park also was hit during the night. ``But I expect it there. I keep 2 gallons of paint, just figuring I can outspend them if I can`t outpaint them.``

Gangs have been operating in the area off and on for five years, he said. ``One group will get older and it will quiet down and then another group will come along and pick it up,`` he said.

Capt. John Martin of the North Side anti-gang tactical unit said there has not been heavy gang activity in the West Andersonville area, though gang graffiti have been a sporadic problem there.